Building Towards The Future
The offseason is always our busiest time at Four Winds Field, as we focus on improving, upgrading, and preparing for another exciting year of South Bend Cubs baseball. And this offseason has been one of our biggest yet!
As you may have heard, we are in the middle of a $48 million renovation to make Four Winds Field even better. But while construction continues, one thing remains the same—our commitment to providing industry-leading entertainment in a clean, safe, and family-friendly environment. No matter what, we will continue to give you the best experience in Minor League Baseball!
Some of the exciting upgrades you’ll notice this season include the relocation of our Fun Zone to right field, the addition of new Dugout Box seats, and extended netting for enhanced safety. We’ve also taken the opportunity to install a brand-new playing surface and warning track—our investment to keep the field in top condition. By Memorial Day weekend, we expect to unveil an expanded splash pad in left-center field, adding another fun experience for families visiting the ballpark.
South Bend Cubs Chairman and Owner Andrew Berlin
Of course, none of this would be possible without the hard work of the local tradesmen, women, and unions who are bringing these improvements to life. We are incredibly grateful for their dedication to making Four Winds Field the best it can be.
Beyond the ballpark, it's incredible to see the continued growth of Downtown South Bend, with new businesses and developments taking shape around us. It’s no coincidence that this area has flourished alongside the investments made in Four Winds Field, and we’re proud to play a role in this transformation.
As always, the heart of our success is our people—the incredible staff who create unforgettable experiences every time you walk through the gates. Their passion and dedication make every visit special, and we can’t wait for you to see them in action this season.
Thank you for being a part of the South Bend Cubs family. We’ll see you soon at Four Winds Field—where the best is yet to come! See you soon and Go Cubs!!!
Warmly,
Andrew Berlin
South Bend Cubs - Chairman/Owner
Chicago Cubs - Partner/Investor
FROM THE BEND TO THE BIGS
By: Tyler Reidy
For the second consecutive preseason, the Chicago Cubs’ system boasts seven players inside the MLB Pipeline Top 100 Prospects list. That count leads the National League and ties for the most in baseball with the Seattle Mariners. Former South Bend Cub Cam Smith, whom Chicago shipped to Houston in the Kyle Tucker trade, also appears on the list.
With Pete Crow-Armstrong and Michael Busch having reached the big leagues, Matt Shaw now bears the title of king Cubs prospect. Here’s how he and the rest of the Cubs’ top-100 contingent shape up entering 2025.
No. 19 Matt Shaw
When the Cubs traded for Tucker in December, they didn’t just add a high-impact bat. They cleared Shaw’s lane to an Opening Day start in the big leagues, which he made at third base against the Los Angeles Dodgers on March 18 in Tokyo. A day later, Shaw recorded his first Major League hit and run scored, bringing home Chicago's third run in the fifth inning and opening what should end up a very real case for National League Rookie of the Year honors.
The No. 2 third-base prospect, Shaw
Shaw readies for a pitch against the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. (August 1, 2023)
Credit: Dr. Tim Reilly
combines a powerful, all-fields approach with aggressive baserunning. With a lofty leg kick, he became Maryland’s home-run king and the Big Ten Player of the Year in 2023. Chicago called his name 13th overall that summer, and so began his rapid ascent through the system.
Bypassing Single-A Myrtle Beach, Shaw debuted with South Bend in August and departed for Knoxville not even a month later. Opening 2024 as MLB’s 54th-ranked prospect with the Double-A Smokies, Shaw slugged his way to Southern League MVP status and an August promotion to Triple-A Iowa. He finished last season as one of four minor-leaguers to tally 20 homers and 30 steals.
No. 52 Cade Horton
Chicago’s highest-drafted pitcher since Mark Prior in 2001, Horton’s got plenty of eyes on him. The 23-year-old has risen through the organization steadily since going seventh overall in the 2022 draft, but a Grade 2 strain near his pitching shoulder shelved him last year after reaching Iowa.
Should Horton earn a shot with the
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Credit: Ethan Levy
big club, he’s got the stuff and makeup to have an impact. The right-hander’s money pitch, a wipeout slider, helped him strike out 24 in two College World Series starts at Oklahoma in 2022. A year later, Horton made his first professional season one to remember. Between Myrtle Beach, South Bend, and Knoxville, he started 21 times, collecting 117 strikeouts in 88.1 innings at a 2.65 earned run average. Entering last year as the organizational Pitcher of the Year, Horton made nine starts before the injury shut him down.
No. 54 Owen Caissie
Caissie was hardly 18 years old when the San Diego Padres took him 45th overall in the 2020 draft. Since then, he’s fleshed out a four-year rise through the ranks of the Cubs, who acquired him in the Yu Darvish deal of December 2020.
A powerful left-handed bat with a speedy swing and a plus arm,
Caissie spent all of the 2022 Midwest League Championship season in South Bend. Among his 11 blasts in the Bend were a walk-off grand slam on the eve of his birthday and a score-opening shot in Game 3 of the championship series. Caissie kept rolling with the Smokies in 2023, pounding 22 round-trippers. That total put him at 47th in the 2024 Preseason Top 100, a ranking he followed with a 19-homer season in Iowa last year.
Caissie
off after
hit against the Cedar Rapid Kernels on Sept. 9, 2022.
Credit: John Mersits
No. 69 Moisés Ballesteros
Another 21-year-old, Ballesteros is making his debut inside the top 100. The stocky catcher signed out of Venezuela in 2021 checks in as the Cubs’ two-time defending Minor League Player of the Year.
Ballesteros wields a terrific left-handed hit tool and has gradually added power to his bat-to-ball
Credit: Ethan Levy
taking
a
Horton making his pitching debut for the South Bend Cubs at Four Winds Field May 24, 2023.
Ballesteros warming up with starting pitcher before a game. (2023)
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skills, climbing from 10 home runs in 2022 to 19 last year. The backstop hit .301 with six big flies and 31 RBI during his 56-game stop in South Bend at the end of the 2023 season. Last year, he slashed .289/.354/.471 with 44 extra-base hits, joining Shaw and Caissie at the Futures Game and playing his final 68 games with Iowa.
Triantos collecting a ground ball at second base. (August 1, 2023)
Credit: Dr. Tim Reilly
No. 73 James Triantos
The fifth-ranked MLB second-base prospect, Triantos returns to the Top 100 in the same location where he began last year. He’s another bat-to-ball savant entering his fifth year of pro ball. Chicago selected Triantos straight out of high school in 2021, and the second-round choice has since produced a .289 average with developing speed and outfield capabilities. A Luis Arraezlike hitter who seldom strikes out, Triantos appeared in 80 games with South Bend in 2023, hitting .285. He’d win Arizona Fall League Offensive Player of the Year acclaim later that fall, slashing a remarkable .417/.495/.679. Triantos parlayed that success into a 2024 season in which he hit .300, ranking second in the Southern League. In Des Moines, he finished off a 47-stolen base campaign that more than doubled his previous career total.
No. 90: Kevin Alcántara
Alcántara makes his third appearance in the Preseason Top 100 after ranking 87th in 2023 and 65th last year. The lanky Dominican outfielder is the only Cubs top-100 prospect with Major
League experience, as he appeared in three September games with Chicago last year.
Alcantara celebrates after hitting a home run in the final game of the 2023 season.
Credit: Ethan Levy
Possessing a rare combination of size and speed, Alcántara joined the system as part of the Anthony Rizzo trade in 2021. He spent 95 games with South Bend in 2023, hitting .286 with 40 extra-base knocks and 66 RBI. His power potential comes with plenty of chase, but his ability to play all three outfield positions well makes him a depth option for the big-league club in 2025.
No. 97: Jefferson Rojas
A longtime fan of former Cub shortstop Javier Baéz, Rojas is debuting in the Top 100. The Dominican middle infielder signed with Chicago in 2022 and will begin the 2025 season still a teenager. Hardly heavier than 150 pounds and coming off a season-long slash line of .245/.310/.336 in South Bend, Rojas has a good amount of physical growth ahead. However, he’s got plus speed, evidenced by his 21 stolen bases in 2024, and a strong arm. Once he adds muscle and draws closer to the age of his peers, Rojas should see his numbers begin to rise.
Rojas smiling as he warms up before a game on April 26, 2024.
Credit: Ethan Levy.
FROM BROOKLYN TO CHICAGO: THE SHAWON DUNSTON STORY
Meet the Chicago Cubs Hall-of-Famer at Four Winds Field as part of a special meet-and-greet on May 22
By: Brendan King
Thomas Jefferson High School, located in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, wasn’t exactly known for the superiority of its baseball team in the early 1980s. The building, which still stands to this day, although the school closed in 2022, is plopped right in the middle of a couple of skinny New York City streets, which can barely fit two local buses side-by-side.
The point here is this place never screamed baseball. It didn’t attract top players. That was until a high-rising prospect named Shawon Dunston enrolled into school at TJHS, and a legendary career was about to sprout from the concrete surrounding the baseball diamond.
Dunston grew up in the same East
New York neighborhood where the high school operated beginning in 1922. The son of Jack, a local taxi driver, and Brenda, a women’s clothing store associate, Dunston told his parents from an early age that he was going to be a baseball player.
“I fell in love with the game when I was four or five years old,” Dunston explained to us at Cubs Convention 2025 in a hallway connecting multiple ballrooms at the Grand Sheraton Chicago. “I told my parents when I was nine that I would be a baseball player.”
No player like Dunston had ever stepped on the baseball field at Thomas Jefferson High School. The alumni base includes many successful actors, business operators, and even 1985 Chicago Bears Super Bowl Champion Otis Wilson. But baseball? Not so much.
Dunston took over the high school baseball scene on the East Side of New York, clubbing his way to a .790 batting average his senior year. Yes, .790. That’s not a typo.
Dunston poses as he is inducted into the Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame at Wrigley Field Sept. 10, 2023
Credit: Chicago Cubs Media Relations
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The big year to cap off his amateur career made plenty of waves among scouts and decision-makers in the Major Leagues. So much so, Dunston became one of the top prospects available in the 1982 MLB Draft.
Dunston was selected by the Chicago Cubs with the number-one overall pick in 1982. Normally, a number-one pick may face a ton of pressure when they’re picked that high, mostly because of the high stakes to perform. For Dunston, it was a different scenario.
“The pressure came when they kept telling me ‘I need to do this, I need to do that, I need to be Ernie Banks,’ and I was listening to it because I was young,” Dunston said. “I wasn’t trying to be Ernie, I was trying to live up to him because he’s the greatest shortstop in Cubs history.”
The first stop after getting drafted? A trip to the Gulf Coast League to play
Rookie Ball in Florida. Dunston hit .321 in his first 53 professional games and then achieved his first opportunity to play at the full-season Minor League level. That League, the same one in which you are reading this story, the Midwest League.
The 20-year-old packed his bags out of Spring Training for Davenport, Iowa, where he spent the entirety of the 1983 season with the ‘Quad City Cubs’. It was this season where the number-one pick hype really started to heat up. Today, it’s pretty rare to see a Midwest League player at the age of 20 or younger hit above .300 for an entire season. Dunston did it with ease, batting .310 in 117 games. After a season playing on the banks of the Mississippi River, Wrigley was calling Dunston. He would spend 1984 with the Triple-A Iowa Cubs, and then, the following April out of Spring Training, he got the call. The MLB debut. April 9, 1985,
Dunston turns to make a double play at shortstop for the Chicago Cubs in 1989. Credit: Chicago Cubs Media Relations
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against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Wrigley Field.
In 18 Big League seasons, a love affair with Cubs fans, especially, followed. He spent 12 of those 18 years as a Cub, including in 1990, when Dunston was voted an All-Star for the second time in his career. The 1990 All-Star Game
Credit: Chicago Cubs Media Relations
was unlike his first, however, 1988 in Cincinnati. This one was at his home park. The Friendly Confines.
A rainy summer night in Chicago, Dunston represented the National League with his Cubs jersey on and got to watch his hero, Ernie Banks, throw out the First Pitch before the game.
“We had just had our second daughter at the time, and my whole family was there,” Dunston said. “I remember I went 0/2, but that didn’t matter. I was an All-Star, and that meant everything.”
Before he retired, Dunston experienced one more big career moment. Playing in the World Series. A member of the San Francisco Giants, Dunston and his teammates took on the Anaheim Angels in 2002. His highlight moment came in Game 6, when he homered in a
pivotal moment to give San Francisco a 2-0 lead.
“I wanted to play in the World Series with the Cubs, but unfortunately I didn’t get the chance. But that meant everything [in 2002]”, Dunston said. “Hitting the home run in the World Series, my son was one of the Giants bat boys. And he was waiting for me at home plate and gave me a kiss. That was the greatest moment of my baseball career.”
The only Thomas Jefferson High School alumnus to ever play in the World Series – a remarkable honor. But the same could be said for what followed in 2023, when Dunston was voted into the Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame.
As humble as they come, Dunston says he doesn’t feel he should be mentioned in the same sentence as Banks, Billy Williams, Ron Santo, and others. But what he means to the City of Chicago, and its baseball history, says different. The legend is forever engrained in Wrigley Field history.
Dunston will be taking his first ever trip to Four Winds Field on Thursday, May 22, for a special meet-and-greet opportunity with fans. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit SouthBendCubs.com
Dunston poses with Mark Grace at their Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame Introduction at Wrigley Field on Sept 10, 2023.
Credit: Chicago Cubs Media Relations
Dunston gets a hit during the 1990 All Star Game at Wrigley Field.
PLAN YOUR 2025 GROUP OUTING
Are you looking for the perfect place to plan your next group outing? We have a variety of packages to suit your every need! Treat your group of 20 or more to a fun night of affordable entertainment! Four Winds Field is a great place to entertain employees, clients, team members, civic organizations, and even family reunions.
2025 SOUTH BEND CUBS COACHING STAFF
Nick Lovullo - Manager
Nick Lovullo returns for his second season as Manager. A former Boston Red Sox prospect, the 30-year-old was drafted in the 20th round of the 2016 MLB Draft by Boston, after a collegiate career at Holy Cross. He grew up and played his high school baseball in Thousand Oaks, California. In his first pro season, Lovullo was promoted as high as Double-A Portland. His professional career concluded in 2021, in a stop with the Miami Marlins organization, as well as independent baseball. The son of Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo, Nick became the Double-A Tennessee Smokies bench coach in 2022 and managed the Arizona Complex League Cubs in 2023.
George Thanopoulos - Pitching Coach
George Thanopoulos who was an assistant coach in 2021, returns to South Bend as the pitching coach. Between 2021 and 2025, Thanopoulos spent time working at the Cubs Complex in Mesa, Arizona, before taking the Myrtle Beach Pelicans pitching coach job in 2024. Thanopoulos oversaw a Pelicans pitching staff that finished with 1178 strikeouts in 2024, and the Birds posted the second lowest opposing team batting average in the Carolina League at just .223. A former pitcher with the Colorado Rockies organization, Thanopoulos was a part of both the 2016 and 2017 teams with the Boise Hawks in the Northwest League.
Nate Spears - Hitting Coach
Nate Spears returns for his second season with the South Bend Cubs as the hitting coach. Spears began his playing career with the Baltimore Orioles, after they selected him in the fifth-round of the 2003 MLB Draft. The Fort Myers, Fla. native was traded by the Orioles to the Northsiders in the Corey Patterson deal in 2006. Spears played for former South Bend manager Buddy Bailey in 2008 with Double-A Tennessee, and made it to Triple-A Iowa. His career then took him to the Boston Red Sox, where he made his MLB debut. Spears played for Boston in 2011 and 2012. As a coach, he stayed with the Red Sox, and woundup coaching Nick Lovullo while he was a Red Sox prospect.
Daniel Wasinger Bench Coach
Nick Roberts Athletic Trainer
Allen Cooper Strength and Conditioning Coach
Collin Andrews Development Coach
Jose Zapata Assistant Pitching Coach
INFIELDERS
CATCHERS
Inside The Manager’s Office
South Bend Cubs skipper Nick Lovullo returns for year two working in Four Winds Field dugout
By Brendan King
During his first year managing the South Bend Cubs in 2024, Nick Lovullo entered nearly every day with something new to learn. Whether that was the adjustment to becoming a full-season manager in Minor League Baseball for the first time, making daily team schedules, coordinating practices, communicating with players (both in English and Spanish), or actually experiencing
Lovullo points towards the field while discussing the game with Pedro Ramirez during the season opener game at Quad Cities. (April 4, 2024 )
Credit: Ethan Levy
something unique in a game situation as a manager, as opposed to as a player, it was a momentous year in the baseball growth of the South Bend skipper.
Now, Lovullo is geared up for season two calling the ’574’ his summer home. And with each passing day, it feels more and more like home, with his short walk to work from The Ivy at Berlin Place Apartments, along with his wife and dog.
“Everyone in South Bend did a phenomenal job of making not just mine, but everyone’s lives easy last year,” Lovullo said. “Knowing now what the atmosphere is like in South Bend when we get there makes things easier for me, as well as for the rest of the returners. This is actually the first time in my coaching career that I’ll be returning to the same place for a second straight year.”
The familiarity is going to give Lovullo an instant leg-up, not just with knowing what to expect when he gets to the field every day, but having the experience of how the Midwest League operates. What’s the best time to leave in the morning for a road trip? When is batting practice at each visiting field? How are the hotels? Instead of speculation, there
Lovullo looks back and celebrates a play made by the South Bend Cubs on June 19, 2024.
Credit: Ethan Levy
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are now congruent answers.
As to what the process looks like in getting ready for the 2025 season, Lovullo discussed a consistent approach from 2024, with a couple of tweaks that took place at Spring Training in Mesa, Arizona.
“The pre-season process was business as usual and quite similar to what I tried to do last season,” Lovullo explained. “We are continuing to work as hard as we can as a staff and a full unit, trying to make each player find their stride. We have done a really good job as an organization at identifying areas where guys need to improve in, and then hammering away at that. So if there was any change, there is now a little more of an individualized approach in some ways.”
Credit: Ethan Levy
There was also plenty of time for Lovullo to brainstorm and jot down new ideas during his quote, unquote
“off-season.” After the South Bend Cubs wrapped things up in September of 2024, Lovullo got about a month to go home, reset, and go right back to work. He was awarded an opportunity to coach winter baseball in Puerto Rico, with ‘Senadores de San Juan’.
The team is owned by Major League Baseball Hall-of-Famer Roberto Alomar and was founded in 1938. Manager Ricky Rivera was connected with Lovullo by Chicago Cubs Director of Player Development, Jason Kanzler. After a brief interview process at the end of the Midwest League season, Lovullo was added to the coaching staff, working primarily as a defensive coach, and also as the club’s first base coach.
“It was really a great opportunity to not just continue to coach, but to also improve my Spanish.” Lovullo said. “It was cool because there were a bunch
Lovullo watches on while standing at third base to coach against the Cedar Rapid Kernels. (2024)
of Cubs prospects in the league, like Joe Nahas, Johzan Oquendo, Miguel Pabon, and others. We made the Championship Series, which was a 9-game series. And since our team finished last the prior year, it was fun to exceed expectations and go as far as we did. We upset one of the best teams in the league early in the playoffs.”
The winter ball experience now leads Lovullo into another opportunity to contend in the Midwest League. Of course, Lovullo has a family heritage that is deeply enriched in the game.
His dad, Torey Lovullo, is the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Last July, after the All-Star Break, the Diamondbacks were playing the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. On a Friday afternoon following a game at The Friendly Confines, Torey and the rest of the Lovullo family took a trip 97 miles east to South Bend -- to watch his son lead his own team.
“I had a lot of time to reflect back on last season, and that was one of the things that really stood out,” Nick said. “My dad, mom, and step-mom, as well as my wife’s parents and her brother were all able to come out. It was a really a special time. Those are days and memo-
ries that none of us will ever forget. Baseball tends to take you away from your family and loved ones for various parts of the year, but it also has a way of bringing you back together.”
With all of his mentors, whether from his playing days in the Boston Red Sox organization, his dad, or the people he works with on a daily basis with the Cubs, Lovullo continues to display a sense of positivity and authenticity that brings the most out of his team. And he’s ready to take the next step in year number two with the South Bend Cubs.
“That’s how I’ve always been,” Lovullo added. “This game is incredibly hard, challenging, and humbling. We preach consistency, whether you’re having a good day or bad day. And that’s for yourself and the teammates around you. My goal this year is to learn from all of the wins, losses, successes, and failures of 2024, and to help prepare our players to take the next step. If we can do that, we can have a successful season for everyone in this organization, plus for the fans and the entire city.”
Lovullo looking on as he coaches from third base against West Michigan. (June 7, 2024)
Credit: Ethan Levy
Lovullo poses with his father Torey Lovullo, manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, after a game at Four Winds Field. (July 19, 2024)
UNDER CUBSTRUCTION
Stadium renovation project taking Four Winds Field to new heights
By Tyler Reidy
Within the past decade, Four Winds Field has three times been named the best ballpark in its class by Baseball Digest. The 37-year home of the South Bend White Sox, Silver Hawks, and Cubs couldn’t be any better, right?
Think again.
With a $48 million improvement that began last September and will continue throughout the 2025 season, Four Winds Field will fortify its place among minor league baseball’s premier venues. Talks of upgrading began in 2021 between Cubs executives Andrew T. Berlin (Owner & Chairman), Joe Hart (President), and Nick Brown (Vice President & General Manager), the three recognizing the organization’s jump in attendance since becoming an affiliate of the Chicago Cubs in 2015.
“The main reason to do it was just to help enhance the experience for the customers,” Hart said. “Anybody that's been out here on a typical Friday or Saturday night, you know it's pretty crowded on the concourse – the stadium was never really built to hold what we've been attracting.”
Legislative support helped the Cubs get the project rolling, with the recently passed Professional Sports and Convention Development Agreement (PSCDA) allowing the City of South Bend to pull in the upgrade’s required funds. The PSCDA is available only to Indiana cities with professional sports teams, a box the Cubs allow South Bend to check.
The sun rising over Four Winds Field as construction continues on the new second level during the 2024-2025 renovation project.
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Hart cited state senators David Niezgodski and Ryan Mishler, representatives Jake Teshka and Maureen Bauer, mayor James Mueller, and Aaron Perri, the former executive director of the South Bend Venues, Parks, and Arts department, as a few key civic cogs.
Cubs Owner Andrew Berlin
joins South Bend Cubs President Joe Hart and city officals at the Groudbreaking ceremony at the to turn the dirt signifing the beginning of the new renovations at Four Winds Field on Sept 10, 2024
“It's been a very collaborative effort with more than just the ballclub,” Hart said. “City officials have been phenomenal, state officials have been great on this, so it truly is a win-win in a privatepublic partnership.”
Under the watch of Larson-Danielson Construction, the improvement has progressed well thus far, with the new second deck’s final beam going into place on Feb. 26. A few facets of the renovation are already complete, beginning with the new playing surface, which Chicago White Sox head groundskeeper
Roger Brossard installed. Netting now stretches farther down each baseline to protect fans, many of whom will occupy the 1,600 new seats anchored behind the home plate area.
The completed Fun Zone is on the move from the left-field corner to the right-field corner of the stadium, pushing the Splash Pad to the area between the batter’s eye and the Tiki Hut. The new Splash Pad, which Hart noted will open in mid-May, will bring nearer restroom access to outfield spectators. It’ll also be two and a half times larger than the previous iteration, making it more visible to the rest of the ballpark.
Two major pieces of the project won’t reach completion until the 2025-26 offseason, including the four-story office and event center beyond the left-field foul pole. This first class facility gives the team much needed infrastructure and space to serve the large volume of
Rendering of the four story office and event building that will begin during the 2025-26 offseason
South Bends
(center)
fans coming to the stadium every year.
The main floor provides space for a much-needed kitchen and warehouse expansion as well as a covered space for picnic food lines and restrooms. The third floor will house the South Bend Cubs front office and the top level will open up as a rooftop bar. Floor two’s event space, with a capacity of 260, will provide a game-changer for Four Winds Field’s year-round capabilities.
“This is a great amenity because right now, we don't have any facilities big enough for big holiday parties, big reunions, wedding receptions during the cold weather months,” Hart described. “This is going to be a high-end, firstclass facility that we'll be able to do a lot more events year-round versus just what we can do in baseball season.”
Construction will continue throughout the 2025 season but fear not. Crews will be done with work each day prior to gates opening, eliminating disruptions to the gameday experience.
“The biggest thing that's going to be unique is the fans are going to actually be able to watch construction more
or less real-time as they come out to the ballpark,” Hart mentioned. “We're going to have some areas that will be fenced off during the summertime, but it shouldn't be anything that impacts the fans. That was the number one thing that we said when we started this project is we have to have very little to no impact on the fan experience regardless of what construction is going on.”
History would suggest that the Cubs may hit a grand slam with the current project. The 2012 upgrade that brought the Fun Zone, Splash Pad, and Cubs Den Team Store to Four Winds earned Baseball Digest’s Ballpark Renovation of the Year award. This improvement comes with a price tag $43.5 million higher but a common goal: enhance the downtown South Bend community.
“Our commitment from the beginning is we wanted to help revitalize downtown South Bend, and one way to do that is you’ve got to get more people coming to South Bend,” Hart said. “So we think we've been able to do that, and we think the numbers are going to continue to grow."
Andrew Berlin speaking at the raising of the final Steel beam for the second story renovations at Four Winds Field on February 26, 2025.
Social Media Clubhouse
Follow current and former South Bend Cubs players on Instagram as they make their way to the big leagues! Don't forget to follow @SBCubs on X and Instagram for upcoming events and behind the scenes moments!
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AROUND THE BASES Frankie Scalzo Jr.
What is your favorite pre-game song/artists your currently listening to?
I've been listening to a lot of Maggie Roggers and Greta Van Fleet.
What is your favorite T.V. show to binge watch? My favorite show to binge watch in my freetime is Survivor.
Who is your favorite baseball player of all time? My favorite baseball player of all time is Jake Peavy.
Whhat is your go to pre-game meal/snack? My go to pre-game snack is apple sauce.
Are you superstitous at all?
No not really. My one thing is I can't shave the stache.
Favorite thing to do in the off-season?
In the off-season I enjoy cooking and going thrifting.
Fun fact that fans might not know about you?
I have two cat named Lugnut and Jigsaw. Jigsaw only has three legs.
If you could travel to one place you've never been to, where would you go? I would love to go to Greenland one day.
What teammate(s) do you enjoy playing with the most? I really enjoy playing with James Triantos and Will Sanders.
When did you first start growing the mustache? I was born with it actually, just kidding. I've been growing it since my senior season in college.
AUTOGRAPHS
Pitcher Jaxon Wiggins
